Enter the hunter satellites preparing for space war - Ars Technica

The Jackals will not house guns, warheads, or laser blasters, but they will be capable of rendezvous proximity operations (RPO)—the ability to maneuver close to other satellites and train a battery of sensors upon them.

If that goes well, Rogers envisages deploying thousands of autonomous spacecraft in service of the US military, controlled by a team of human operators and AI “to pursue adversaries wherever they fly, and to provide the tools of accountability.”

“If you take the job of defense and protection of the domain seriously, you have to have the ability to do the joint functions of maneuver and fires.” Although the military often uses “fires” to mean kinetic weapons like guns and shells, in the space context, it usually refers to jamming, electronic warfare, and cyberattacks.

True Anomaly has already applied for a trademark covering, among other things, hardware and software for “orbital space-to-space imagery, rendezvous proximity, and target acquisition systems.”

And prior to that, he incorporated a company called 3720 to 1, Inc—a reference to the odds of Han Solo successfully navigating an asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back, according to C-3PO.

Whether Rogers’ pursuit of a satellite venture is more likely to succeed, or just another piece of gung-ho science fiction, should be a lot clearer after SpaceX’s rocket launches in October.